Will Baby Boomers be our next crime wave?

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This post is meant to be somewhat humorous, but also to touch upon a question that came up while discussing retirement accounts and Social Security with my coworker.

I had brought up the point that my grandmother is on a totally fixed income since having her stroke and not able to work any longer, and that my parents may have to deal with decreasing Social Security payments as they progress into their Golden Years (they’re only mid/late-50s now). I lamented that I’ll never see a government-secured fixed income during my retirement, so I need to worry about planning for my future today even more than my parents did.

But then the thought struck me:

Are we going to have a problem with Baby Boomers turning into criminals to supplement their income?

Seriously, as our parents/grandparents get into their 70s, and the Social Security and Medicare systems begin to falter from the burden, will they resort to violence to support themselves? Think about it. My parents’ generation seems to be more willing to just go down in a blaze of glory. I don’t have any facts to back this up; just consider it a gut feeling.

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Clever Dude

7 Comments

Blaze of Glory? In their 70’s? The mind may be willing, but the body might falter as they try to hop over the cashier’s window counter.

However, when it comes to computer crimes, I think you might have something. Someone only needs to be of sound mind, really, to commit identity theft. Or, to hack an e-commerce website and troll for CC numbers, grandpa would just need to know a little bit of programming.

I doubt it. Just because they are low on income doesn’t mean they are going to drop their morals/lifestyle and commit a crime. I think I understand where your idea of this might happening is coming from, and I do agree that some people may turn to this. But by in large, I think that if a person was someone who had moral problems with committing a crime when they were younger, they would, in general, stick to these morals.

Than again, I could be wrong.

The way you wrote the article, you appear to want a government-secured fixed income. I may have missed an earlier article talking about this, but what exactly do you mean? Do you mean you want the government to require that employers pay a certain pension, and if they don’t, fill in the gaps to a certain level? Or are you saying that you want a more secure Social Security? Or are you saying something else?

(If I missed an article earlier about the subject, feel free to just link me to it instead of writing it again.)

Delroy, you got the idea of the article that it was more of a consideration of our SS system and the potential state of affairs in another 10-20 years.

I really don’t have an opinion to share about whether I want or expect the government to help me out during retirement. I do, however, wish that my SS contributions through the years would come back to me eventually, but I know that’s just a pipe dream. My taxes are going to pay for my parents’ and grandparents’ retirements.

[…] place? You should read this first. Clever Dude has a funny but potentially sad post up titled Will Baby Boomers be our next crime wave? I see it now, my mom wearing a mask driving an A-Team like van speeding across state lines. […]